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Rick Archer: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually Awakening people. Sometimes I call them conversations because people wonder why I talk so much and if it’s just an interview, so it’s a conversation. In fact, Irene has a laminated paper here that she holds up from time to time and says You’re talking too much. Anyway, here we are. This show is made possible by the support of appreciative listeners and viewers. If you appreciate it and feel like supporting it, there’s a Donate button on every page. I’ve done. Well over 400 of these now, and if you’d like to check out previous ones, go to batgap.com. And look under the past interviews menu. My guest today is Kimberly Braun. Kimberly is a minister. She has an MA in theology, I believe, right? Yeah. CSP, what’s that?
Kimberly Braun: Certified speaking professional? It’s an honorary certification through the NSA. For my years of public speaking and inspirational talks.
Rick Archer: And NSA is the National Security…?
Kimberly Braun: I know, isn’t that funny? The National Speaking Association.
Rick Archer: Oh, Speaking Association, okay,
Kimberly Braun: They talked about changing that.
Rick Archer: Yeah. You wonder. And you’re a meditation coach. And you have been impelled from within your contemplative experiences from the age of five, over 10 of your years were spent as a Carmelite monastic nun. And just skipping along here. Okay, we’ll cover some more of this as as we go through the interview. So it’s funny, I was reading your book, about your time is a Carmelite nun. And I was reading you know, okay, burning the potatoes, kissing the floor, cross country skiing out to the compost pit, and things like that the books almost over, When is she going to leave this this convent? You know? And I got to the end, I read Oh, it’s a trilogy? I just read the first part. Yes.
Kimberly Braun: Some people feel really teased by that.
Rick Archer: So we’ll have to get into the whole story here, we’ll have to do the, like, who’s I got used to say, now you know, the rest of the story?
Kimberly Braun: Yes, I will reveal some of the story.
Rick Archer: I will see how much we can tease out of you. In any case, you mentioned you started having profound mystical experiences from the age of five. So let’s start there. What were some of your earliest recollections of profound spiritual experiences?
Kimberly Braun: Right, I I think that children and I would include myself in that are experiencing more of a merging in the joy of just being alive, you know, there’s an innocence and an openness. So in that way, I think that a lot of what I was experiencing isn’t incredibly unique. But what I can point to, that seems to be notable is that I would oftentimes find myself in these incredible states of joy, that would be in ritual, because I grew up Catholic, which was very powerful for me, it would be out in nature, it would be in the simplest things happening within my family, and time would seem to stop. And it’s difficult to put words to it, because as the time seemed to stop, from within and without, everything would move into this very timeless place. And there would be a knowing but it was a knowing without my mind. It was what I would really call a state of deep bliss. And it was very informative, I would always come out of those instances, sometimes they would last just for a couple minutes. Sometimes it would last for long periods, like a half hour. They escalated in my late teens, too many hours. But back then when I was little, I would always walk out of them. And there was this incredible excitement, of feeling like I knew what life was about. And it gave me a lot of meaning a lot of purpose, a lot of direction. And it has been both a wind in my sails and a rudder that I’ve never actually been been able to move away from. So even in my dark moments there. It’s always been in the framework of those existential experiences.
Rick Archer: A lot of little kids actually do have pretty profound experiences, but I think there might be a correlation. I think I may have seen a correlation and all the people I’ve interviewed between having really profound experiences as a young child such as seeing angels or, or unity consciousness or something like that, and a later awakening, you know, in one’s 20s, maybe, or 30s, or whatever, later later on in life, it seems that the people who have a profound spiritual shift very often have kind of more extraordinary, pronounced spiritual experiences when they’re little,
Kimberly Braun: I would believe that I was experiencing from when I was three onwards, a sense of the immaterial being as real as the material. And I was also experiencing healing gifts through me. My mom and dad were involved in a charismatic movement that was very grassroots very, the laying on of hands and praying in tongues, and there was a sense of openness to possibility and potential in our family. And they were so rooted in their own genuineness towards truth and kindness, that I think it’s set the stage for me as a young child to be tasting these things in myself to be have having them happen within me. Yeah.
Rick Archer: It’s very, it’s a fortunate birth. I mean, there’s a there’s a verse in the Bhagavad Gita about, you know, Arjuna asked Lord Krishna, well, what happens if a person’s on the path to enlightenment and dies? You know, then Krishna says, well, they’re they live generally long period of time in the sort of celestial realms, and then they’re born into a pure and illustrious family, or if they’re really fortunate into a family of Yogi’s? You know, so this seems like there’s different degrees of auspiciousness, in terms of the birth one can have.
Kimberly Braun: Yeah, I think I think that plays a big part. And I am super grateful. I’ve always felt as though even encountering my mom and dad. And, of course, you know, as a child, you have the idealistic that they’re perfect. And now I know they’re not perfect, but they’re ones
Rick Archer: that mine weren’t. But anyway.
Kimberly Braun: But I could, I could feel something bright in their innocence, even when I was four years old, I can remember looking at them. And it was a feeling quality of this, of this true seeking. It wasn’t that they didn’t sit around and have deep philosophical conversations. They weren’t doing specific things that would lead to that. It was just in their being, and I could see their relationship with themselves in the world. And it led me taste that even more within myself. It took me a number of years, but I realize the compassion that I was tasting in them was actually the compassion that was within me.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I just want to add one thing to what I just said a second ago, which is that there are exceptions to that generality I just made. And I’ve interviewed people who are, you know, sexually abused as children and had all kinds of horrific things happen. And they actually feel in retrospect, that in a roundabout sort of way that was instrumental in their awakening that was like the, the medicine they needed in order to, you know, jar them out of whatever into a deeper seeking of higher knowledge.
Kimberly Braun: Right. I think oftentimes, when we experience a know within ourselves, it’s because we already have a knowing of the Yes. One of my systematics professors in my my theology and seminary training, brilliant man. And he would say, from time to time, he’d look us down in the class, he had this mannerism that was really imitable. And he would say, there’s a fine line between an atheist and a mystic, there’s a fine line. And here you are in a very constructed Catholic seminary training. And our training taught us that mysticism blast open and, and our nose that are happening when we’re saying it’s not that no to God no to that. It’s because we’re tasting something of the truth. And we’re simply it can’t be that because it’s got to be something else that I’m wired for.
Rick Archer: Interesting. Let’s probe this a little bit more, because I find that interesting. atheist and a mystic. I actually really enjoy listening to talks by Sam Harris and some of his atheistic compadres. You know, because they’re so darn intelligent. And Sam Harris’s case, he’s like a practicing Buddhist, and he’s done tons of meditation, two years and retreat and all kinds of stuff. And yet he’s an atheist. And I think, God, look at your hand, buddy. I mean, just look at one cell in it and tell me that there isn’t some incredible intelligence orchestrating this universe. But also, I mean, the very fact of saying one is an atheist seems to be very unscientific because you’re you’re taking an absolute stance rather than a hypothetical one which would still be on into experiential exploration.
Kimberly Braun: Yeah, I love that I love the way that you put that. And I think truly that somebody that the people that I’m speaking to that are atheists are usually ones that have had experiences that are just leading them more into the unknown. And I know that technically, that’s not what an atheist is. But most of the the atheists that I feel that are really committed, and it’s that unknown piece, and in that unknown piece in that being, the dissolution of everything, the dismantling of the constructs that our mind set up, that give us an idea of who we are, and what life is about, and when all of that is really shaken open, I think that we are then in in the divine embrace.
Rick Archer: But how can they call themselves atheist? Why not agnostics? I mean, isn’t that a bit like saying, I don’t believe in black holes? You know, alright, but maybe, let’s see what experiential evidence there may be for black holes, you know, so what Why Can’t God be something that is open to experimental investigation?
Kimberly Braun: Well, I’d be interested in your thoughts, you know, my thoughts is that as human beings, we like, we feel more solid, when we take a stance, it gives us even if the security is ill founded, it does give us a little bit of ground to stand on, from which we could perhaps surrender into something a bit more. And I do think a lot of these choices that we’re making around the stances are people think they’re logical based, but I, I’m convinced they’re emotional and more energetic based. And that has its own line of logic to it.
Rick Archer: Yeah, it’s as if they’re building a sort of a superstructure of logic to rationalize the emotional or energetic foundation that underlies it.
Kimberly Braun: That’s where I would stand, if you will. In relation to that, I have an incredible amount of ease fulness, around the constructs that we set up for these deeper yearnings that go on in our souls, I feel incredibly blessed that I was broken open within a tradition. And now I’m not within a tradition as the fruits of surrendering into a construct that was a gateway for my own mystic side, if you will, and the consciousness that I am coming into form. So I have this real softness, when I hear people land in certain places, even if, even if that landing is just a stepping stone and not the final goal.
Rick Archer: Yeah, as you probably know, a lot of spiritual traditions talk about the value of not knowing I think in Buddhism, there’s a thing of, I don’t know, don’t know, mind or something like that. And because it keeps you in a state of openness, I mean, Nisargadatta said that he considers the ability to appreciate paradox and ambiguity to be hallmarks of spiritual maturity.
Kimberly Braun: Yes, and when we’re comfortable with the pathless path, yeah. That that there is a path to the path lessness
Rick Archer: essentially, that we’re taking this little I know engine, because definitely not premeditated. We’re just getting into it here. But I was thinking about the comparison perhaps between an ardent atheist and an ardent believer in Jesus or Mohammed or whoever. It’s like, there’s a, there’s a fundamental similarity to them both in light of what you said a minute ago, in that they’re, they’re holding on to something for to swage some kind of fear, or for the sake of some kind of security that they find in in their ardency.
Kimberly Braun: I think so. And I think there’s a place for that. I think as human beings, it’s a stage. And if I look at the human species, I think we’re a little bit like three year olds, and four year olds, I feel like we’re very young and our development and to hold on to something in this time space continuum. While we experienced that were much more than that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And if we can provide opportunities where people can be okay and be accepted for holding on and be brought to the limit of that comfort zone, and have a direct dynamic experience of the ineffable in the unknown, then I think that’s what then breaks us open and, and, and in really simple terms. In Scripture we have it’s love that casts out fear and I know that that’s a very general statement, but I think that’s love casts that’ll fear is a very succinct and powerful way to put what I just said in bigger terms.
Rick Archer: Yeah, that’s good. And I appreciate what you’re saying, I’ve interviewed the head of the Hari Krishna movement twice. And just to take an example. And those guys really believe in what they’re what they’re into, you know, and I think fine, you know, um, you know, Billy Graham just died, he really believed in what he was into great. It’s like, everybody’s path is appropriate for them at their stage of development, and you don’t like yank it away from them any more than you would. And I’m not meaning to sound wiser and holier than thou, you know, anybody who’s really attached to some perspective, I’m sure I have my attachments. But, you know, we grow out of them naturally. And it’s really not anyone’s job to wrest it from them, you know?
Kimberly Braun: Yeah. I would say that, in my own life, even though I don’t think that courage is an operative word, because I’m a very much a lover archetype. So if there was kind of an identification to my path, it would be this sensibility that life is a dynamic love, relationship unfolding. And so using my language with that in my construct, I’ve experienced it. And so I move from it. So I feel like I’m moving from banquet to banquet to banquet, even though externally, it looks like I’m going into something and leaving something. But the bigger change for me was, interestingly, leaving the monastery and not staying in the monastery, because staying in the monastery, I was so caught up in so many ecstatic experiences with God, that it was the natural progression to the love affair, you know, when you are, head over heels and on fire and your whole life is changing. You’ve just got to have it. There’s an impelling force there that, that it doesn’t take courage, it doesn’t take thinking about it, it doesn’t take weighing the options. You’ve just got to do it. Yeah. And there was the same impelling force and leaving, but it was way more sophisticated and subtle. It was a light illumination. And it was the this is the next step in my love affair. But externally, it took a lot more courage, because the transition was huge to step out in on so many levels emotionally, psychologically, physically. Yeah.
Rick Archer: Well, we’ll take this as an introduction, and we’re going to loop back and build up to the point where you just discussed and because, you know, we kind of leave leapt ahead, I just want to add that I was kind of in a similar situation where I was in the monastic program and the TM movement for 15 years, although it wasn’t anywhere near as monastic as what you were doing. But you know, when I decided to leave, it was like, people were coming to my door and looking at me with JAWS dropping, like, you know, what in the hell are you doing? And so there was a certain, but there was a certain intuitive knowing that this is the next this is what I got to do. But anyway, but enough about me.
Kimberly Braun: Let’s do exactly this. Exactly the same, right.
Rick Archer: So let’s, let’s move back and talk about, like, how you ended up in a monastery in the first place. And probably there are some steps before that, that we want to cover in terms of the kinds of experiences you were having. And, and you know, what, what led up to the decision to enter the it’s not a monastery? It’s a it’s a, what is it called?
Kimberly Braun: It is no, it’s a monastery.
Rick Archer: What’s the other one? The female? condom? Yeah,
Kimberly Braun: but a convent has a different sensibility of lifestyle. So the Carmelites are aeromedical. Okay, meaning that they’re devoted contemplative lifestyle. So, Carmelite monastic living in the same for women. Okay. And that would, and I would say, oftentimes are living a more monastic lifestyle, whereas a convent will oftentimes involve much more relationship with society.
Rick Archer: Okay. So, alright, so we left you at five years old, having profound, timeless, blissful experiences, and but you didn’t join the monastery until you’re in your 20s. So, you know, in with an appropriate amount of detail what happened between those two ages?
Kimberly Braun: Right, well, my, my healing gifts and my prayer gifts, became larger in junior high school, began experiencing gifts like the gift of prophecy, the gift of healing through prayer for others, I was having a lot of when I would lay in bed at night and, and my room would become lit up in all sorts of different ways. And I experienced the presence. I was very I’ve always been very close to Jesus and Mary. And so I would experience their presence Angels, loved ones, and a lot of phenomena, if you will, but in a much more tempered way that happened later on. And then I went through a really big dark night, the dark, the darkest night, I’ve have had other dark moments, but I went through a really big dark night when I was 1617. It started right around there. And it was a, it’s very practical. It was a, it was a division inside myself of understanding how I could be passionate, and how I could be spiritual. And it was a conundrum because I’m, I’m very passionate by nature in every way, I’m passionate about causes I’m passionate about idealistic thought, I’m passionate about exploring the world, I’m passionate about sex I’m passionate about, like, I’m just a passionate person. And experiencing my that quality in myself plunged me into a real confusion in relationship to God. And I didn’t find any mentors
Rick Archer: felt like you’re selling out or compromising or something.
Kimberly Braun: It felt like it wasn’t okay to be who I was. And it plunged me kind of in a hell because you can’t, when you’re in a true dark, that you can’t work it out in your mind. And all you need to wait for something to be revealed, and cultivate. And I didn’t have an understanding through mentorship, or anything of how to hold space for myself. So it was very hard. I mean, I developed all sorts of health issues, and all sorts of things that I honestly think that I would have died had I not come through it, it was very dramatic, struggling, you very much. And then I had this moment, that was completely out of body. And I experienced a state of freedom that I can’t put into words, and that the freedom was dissolved all the identities around all these different things. But again, it didn’t happen in my mind. It, it was based anywhere, it was very, very heart centered, there was an experience of freedom, in that I could be here, I could not be here. Like none of it mattered. And I was utterly free to live. And in that moment, that whole dilemma went away, it’s never resurfaced. And a part of my practical knowing is to be spiritual is to be a living desire of consciousness, at our very centers, arrows, and if we are the desire of God, we are also its fulfillment. And so to live a life that is, in the healthiest sense of the word from that soul desire, then we become who we’re meant to be. So that’s a lot of language around something that was, was not I wouldn’t talk about it that way at the time. But after that moment, wow, I was like, knocked off my butt. I mean, I was like it was being pursued by God. I mean, the heat and the heaviness. I couldn’t get enough time in solitude. And then even when I was with people, they they would they, their spirit being that they were would appear to me, everything I was doing was this experience of Christ, and Christ consciousness. And I was changing and maturing in in dramatic ways. I would spend hours and hours last in the States, and it had a lot. They were different each time. So I won’t give a lot of language to what they were like, but they were incredible. And it was impossible to do anything other than to surrender into this. And that went on from when I was 19 to about six months before I entered the monastery. And I was trying to find a spiritual director out in California and I couldn’t find anybody because I I came off I think is too ordinary for all this to be happening. And, and so the the mature people that I was turning to were disbelieving.
Rick Archer: And so maybe you just had a vivid imagination or something.
Kimberly Braun: Yeah, one guy thought I was falling asleep. I would swoon my body couldn’t always sustain it. It was a very Teresa of Avila type of experience. And, and that was his question to me because I would I would take a step and then I was completely swollen and we take it up for these long periods. And he’s like, No, are you sure you’re falling asleep?
Rick Archer: Yeah. I did it Teresa. have that kind of experience too.
Kimberly Braun: Yes. And that’s where I found my friend. cuz I gave up on trying to find any human community to talk to about it. And I was nervous anyway, because I felt so at that time in my life, I felt very unworthy and humbled and undone and and, and so I was scared a little to talk about it all because I was like, who am I? That was that feeling that doesn’t exist in me anymore because I feel that we are all posting that. And so, my relationship to it’s all different but, but I gave up and one of my roommates a week later after I totally gave up, put Teresa of Avila has Autobiography of her life. And I sat down and I started reading it, and I was weeping because everything she was describing was happening to me. You know, even, you know, even around that time, I had a by location experience because someone was in need of prayer. I was having all of this. And all of this was happening. Tell
Rick Archer: us about that. So you were sitting in your room or something. And you also showed up somewhere else to that? Yes. observable to other people?
Kimberly Braun: Yes, there was this little girl. She was an oriental girl. I can’t quite describe it. I shared it with a spiritual friend. Who knew it was true. And all I can say was that I was I was, I was hot. I was and everything was etheric like, and then I was where I was. And then I was with this girl. She was she was really in anguish. Something had happened that upset her and I did not know what that was. Did she see you or do you just tell her? No, she felt the support she felt but
Rick Archer: I mean, did she actually see you sitting there and later on
Kimberly Braun: recognized? Okay, well, I don’t I never saw her again. Oh, yeah, cuz it was I went somewhere
Rick Archer: total body something rather happened in New Yeah.
Kimberly Braun: Okay. Yeah. So and she she was consoled by that experience. And then once that accounter was over, then I was clearly just in my room. So I was having a lot of things happen of going on. Yeah, a lot, a lot of stuff. So I found refuge Teresa of Avila. And I didn’t even though I grew up Catholic, I really didn’t know about the Carmelites. And then shortly after that somebody put to rest of the Seuss book on my hands. And then I discovered John of the Cross. And there was a visceral, knowing that these were my really close friends. So I began to grow in friendship with them. And as that happens, then it made it it made it really simple to join the monastery. And the right monastery came about it took a long time, I really wanted to go fast, and it was meant to go slow. So
Rick Archer: do you know Francis Bennett management? Yes. Okay. So I just got a question here from Francis. She says, I had an amazingly similar background experiences you deep mystical stuff as a child entering monastic life in my 20s, Dark Knight and late teens, I’ve come to feel very strongly that a lot of my deep spiritual interest coming at such an early age with such intensity and then entering monastic life was due to spiritual practice interest in previous lives. Have you come to that conclusion as well? Kimberly?
Kimberly Braun: That’s a really great question. I would say that there’s been an earnestness in my search, when I’ve, when I’ve experienced other past lives. There, there has, there has been elements of that. I, I traveled lightly in the past life view. So I think it’s very true as a plane of consciousness to understand our evolution into form. So I think there is that thread happening. And I have found more tracing back to Goddess experiences to energetically vibrating Quan Yin and vibrating Kali. And so I even think that that vibrational signature has been more leading informative to me in this life, than even some of my past life.
Rick Archer: Kundalini experts that I’ve interviewed have said that Kundalini can awaken over the course of several lifetimes. So like you can have a it can awaken in one life and then you die. And when you come into the next life, it’s already awakened to that degree. And then it just kind of she they sometimes refer to it as she continues the progress that picked up from what from where it left off. And when you say all this going on and just you know surges of energy and this and that that’s kind of what it sounds like.
Kimberly Braun: It does and what I was experiencing more than a rising I know in traditional energetic constructs, there’s a rising through the spine up into the Enlightenment into the mind. My it’s interesting my experiences in my late teens felt like somebody was crazy. racking my head open in a joyful way. And it would go like this. And then I’d be flooded from my crown chakra down interesting. And then the outflow was that I would my health in my mind, body and heart increased as the fruit of what was happening here versus other some of the energy movements that, that that happened. But I think they’re all just different pathways and I think our personalities and our cultures and that we we have something of a collective consciousness that sets us up. And the real invitation is, is are saying yes, to becoming consciousness in its full form.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Based on what you just said, I want to read something that somebody sent me in an email this week, the difference between the yogic path where the consciousness prepares the body as it moves up the spine, hopefully culminating in a Shiva Shakti reunion, and the mature Vedantic path where the energy comes down the mountain from the head to the heart to or gut to rest in being two vastly different movements, which is why not all Yogi’s become Ianis, some stay up and play in the field of consciousness. It’s not automatic, that they will return to the body. Interesting,
Kimberly Braun: very interesting. Well, I, we all have our challenges. And first, I want to thank you, Francis, for that question. And I bow to your experiences. I would say if I haven’t had any challenge, I’ve wondered if I just wouldn’t do more good. Not being here in this world, you know, so. So just, I mean, I know I meant to be here. There’s no, here, because I’m here. That’s proof. Right? But that has been my bigger challenge. You know,
Rick Archer: feeling like you were you didn’t belong in this godforsaken realm or something.
Kimberly Braun: No, I I’m part and parcel human. But, uh, but but that that sense of really landing, you know, really like, Oh, yes, yes, yes. Because if we if we are very subtle in who and what we are as well. Sometimes I wondered, well, you know, couldn’t I do greater good, just not being in the body?
Rick Archer: Yeah. Stephen Wright joke. He said, I had this deadpan way of speaking that I broke up with my girlfriend. I wasn’t really into meditation, and she wasn’t really into being alive. Oh.
Kimberly Braun: Well, I had a great constellation in 2007. I was traveling, I was still Catholic. And I was I was get this I was on ministerial staff at a church with two Carmelite priests, who really esteemed me as a fellow minister, even though I wasn’t a priest. And so there was great collegiality there. But I was also keenly aware that my experience crossed all different boundaries that was so universal, you know, my, if I could learn to hear the heart of every person before me, I will feel that I have become more skilled in who I meant to be. So my language morphs and shape shifts to be at the service of those so. So it’s beginning to straddle, being on ministry staff and doing things out in the local community and starting to read retreats that were were much more universal and essence based. And, and as I was, as I was doing that, I experienced my mind, I just lost my thoughts. My train of thoughts just now went just now.
Rick Archer: Oh, yeah. Well, you were talking about how you back in 2007, you were serving in stereo capacity. And, and you were, you were becoming more ecumenical, I think more kind of multi multifaceted and growing out of just the one channel you had been living in and I don’t know, my, my jogging. I’m
Kimberly Braun: Tantra Tantra, I found that my Christian mysticism was expressed very well in the writings that I was finding through non dual Tantra.
Rick Archer: Like like Kashmir, Shaivism kind of thing.
Kimberly Braun: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And that that gave me that broadened my language, but it gave me honey, because for the mystics and how I can read them and experience them and feel at home, that good was giving for me a, a practical articulation of the nature of reality and ourselves as the both revealing of a aware awareness and the concealment that’s still in the process of revealing the notion that in the end, God will be all in all The tell our Daystar Dan, that there is this pulsing Omega point and everything is returning in that Christ consciousness. Yeah.
Rick Archer: Many ways we go right now, but I’m thinking that there has to be concealment, in order for there to be revealing otherwise. And I would go so far as to say there has to be concealment, in order for there to be a universe. Somehow, the very process of manifestation necessitates concealment. And so that’s its hide of seek hide and seek game going on, you know, where things get concealed. And then forms eventually evolved, which can which are sophisticated enough to break through the concealment and arrive back at that, that TS Eliot quote about arriving back from whence we started knowing the place for the first time?
Kimberly Braun: Yes, the ever ancient ever knew. Yeah, there’s a speaking to that. And I think what I love about the sophistication of that of that system, and I would consider myself very much a beginner. So I’m going to lead a Tantra of Christ workshop soon as a way of exploring some of these texts side by side. But what I love about it is it challenges us to move away from this way we want to judge ourselves and reality. And, and it’s it, it takes a great strength and vulnerability, to truly move away from the right or wrong way of looking. I’m bad, I’m good. This is right, this is wrong. That is light that is dark. And when we’re willing to be vulnerable enough to say, ah, consciousness might be showing up in concealment and in revealing, and that’s part of the process. How can I assent to that, that takes a lot of courage.
Rick Archer: Yeah, but Well, firstly, as a footnote to on this Kashmir Shaivism point, my interview with Paul mula Ortega, and also Igor Kufa would be good references for those interested in Kashmir Shaivism. But you know, just this morning, I received an email from somebody about payment children’s. I would say, I haven’t read the whole article yet, but rationalization of Trivium Shem Rinpoche is behavior, and you know, which involved excessive drinking, and sexual promiscuity, and so on. And quite often this stuff is rationalized as Crazy Wisdom, or, you know, just sort of, I don’t know, living the fullness of life or something like that. But I think it’s often a rationalization. And I tend to regard such people as half baked, I don’t know whether you’re alluding to that kind of thing or not. But one just has to temper this notion of experiencing everything in the name of living life fully with some sort of moral or ethical values, I think.
Kimberly Braun: Yeah. And I think, I’m not sure I feel qualified to speak to that the, the behavior and all of that, I think the real litmus test is, is there dissipation of energy happening? Or is there magnification of energy happening? Don’t experience human in one? And is there? Is there an expansion because if we’re at scale, expanding Cosmos, then I believe that the human being is meant to expand within it. But the concealment? I think what I’m, what I’m speaking to, is, let’s take this notion is a really simple one, very popular in Christian circles is the admonition that it’s better to give than to receive well, that can sometimes be used in the context of contracting the human being to feel guilty. If they actually participate in the receiving part of things, you know, it sets up a moral standard that has a black and white quality to it, instead of recognizing that there’s a dance and that the concealment part is the human being being vulnerable enough to ask the deeper question, what’s at the surface of the soul desire here? Yeah. So that’s a bit more of what I’m speaking to is that we don’t know ourselves. And we don’t really know the universe. And when we’re willing to hold that and ask hard questions, so that more can be revealed, then more becomes expansive, and we’re living from a soul desire place. We’re living from a place that’s aligned with morality and ethics and things like that.
Rick Archer: Yeah. I think what you’re saying is that, you know, there can Well there’s several things I think you just said One is that, you know, morality and ethics can be kind of codified and one can try to live by the book says this, Therefore I should do that. But also can become a thing where one is in tune with cosmic intelligence, if you want to use it, that phrase and acting according to its dictates spontaneously, so, which may or may not appear to correlate correlate with what the books say. But what you know, in your heart of hearts is the right course to take.
Kimberly Braun: Yes, and that’s a very dynamic way, I think, to show up as consciousness in this world. And I think it’s living that dynamic life that gives that soft interplay between concealment and reveal. I love in Psalm 19, paraphrasing, it’s line three and four. But the first phrases are, The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork. And it’s three and four, day on two day tells the story, and night and tonight reveals the message. So if we look at our lives as an ever flowing day and night, or in Cali terms, if we look at our lives as a conception, birth, living destruction, if we have these movements and these cycles, there’s something always going on there in the divine unfolding. And oftentimes, the concealment moments, the dark nights of our souls, the when we’re sitting in doubt, when we’ve got confusion. If we can potently hold that vigil candle, and it’s figurative in those moments, then we can trust that it will be revealed that that the that the illumination will happen.
Rick Archer: Yeah. So in other words, something good is happening. Keep that in mind.
Kimberly Braun: Yes, thanks for making that really simple. I’d like you talk about you say talk a lot. My dad, my dad said to tell you, he said, Don’t ask her to tell you how the camera works, because you’re going to get the history of cameras.
Rick Archer: And you know, this whole point about ethics and this and that, I just want to you know, there’s that phrase, what would Jesus do? You know, my response to that was, well, you kind of have to be Jesus to know that. And if you’re not Jesus, then you’re only gonna be able to do what you do and what you can do, given your level of consciousness, your level of development. Yeah, it’s hard to emulate a higher level of consciousness. I mean, even, you know, just as it’s hard, hard to like, I don’t know, I can’t ski like Lindsey Vonn. You have to be Lindsey Vonn ski like that. Having had that development.
Kimberly Braun: Right, right. And if we can bring respect into what’s most helpful for each human being and for ourselves in the moment, then we’re being I feel that we’re being wise. Yeah.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Another thought that comes to mind here is that, you know, talking about dark nights and this and that, I kind of feel this might tie into the notion of freewill. You know, some people say we don’t have any whatsoever, my impression is that we do. But there’s a certain out of the whole spectrum of possibilities, we occupy a certain portion of it, and there’s a certain amount of wiggle room within that spectrum, where we can kind of guide it this way. And if with our intention, and if we do we gain greater freedom, or if we can guide it that way, with our intention by doing certain things. And if we do, then we diminish our freedom, we become even more bound and lost. Would you concur with that? Maybe?
Kimberly Braun: Yeah, I thought it’d be nice. Right. I think that’s an interesting way to put it on a practical level. I, I love the question. It’s leaving me to think of, you know, one of the, in the NATA Raj and that statue. And again, I’m not the dance that anyone’s that dancing, Shiva. You know, one of the acts is the willing. And I feel that when we are when we when we are truly free, we will seamlessly and effortlessly. So the more we are, we realize ourselves, yeah, that we’re a soul. And as a soul, we’re having this expression, the more we actually realize that the deep sense of the word than ever then we free will, everything. Yes, it’s it’s like when people feel that they’re participating in the creation process. You know, that a lot of people talk about manifestation. And you know, there’s a whole dilemma around the whole, you know, there’s truth to the law of attraction and there’s a lot of confusion around all of that too. So I would focus much more on the freedom that as human beings were meant to be free and When we attend that personal growth, then all we will comes to be because all we will is aligned with the force of what we are. Yeah. And you spoke to it, I think well in a practical way that we’re participating in that. But we’re not we’re not quite wholly there yet. Yeah, we’re
Rick Archer: one interesting direction we could go at this point with this point is, you know, if God is the president, let’s take that as an assumption for the moment. If he’s not, then then that’s another question is, Where is he hiding? You know, how did you manage to not be in some other, this section of the universe? But if God is omnipresent, then God alone is and of course Vedanta says that kind of thing? Is God alone is, then we are that and Vedanta says that to talk to amasi? And if we are that, then how come we perceive ourselves as being something other than that as being isolated? individuated? And can we rise to a state in which we know ourselves to be that and when we do, then what guides the impulses of our individual life?
Kimberly Braun: I love what you just spoke to, if I were to give a devilish individual
Rick Archer: life anymore, yeah,
Kimberly Braun: right, right. Well, I think that this aspect of form is a celebration of the multifaceted consciousness. So if I had to give a definition of God, I’ve come to God is that, who center is everywhere? And who circumference is nowhere. So in that, I feel that we’re just at the beginning stages of realizing what that even
Rick Archer: is we as a species,
Kimberly Braun: but it’s, it’s there in the consciousness, because we’re speaking to it. And oftentimes, when we hear it, like when I say that, I feel so much joy run through my body. So there’s a coming home feel. So as we realize it, then why would it not be possible for that which is inevitable and formless to have a celebration? In identified specific objects? Yeah, you know, it the construct that dilemma is just simply in our mind, because we don’t actually realize what that means yet. The Con, the conflict doesn’t exist. If God is that, who centers everywhere in circumference, nowhere, there’s no conflict there. Because there is there is a powerful willing, that could have a celebration as identified objects that are in a dance. You know, we’re in a, we’re in a dance right now in our conversation.
Rick Archer: Now, some people might say that sounds kind of airy fairy or nicey nicey. And what about the Holocaust? And what about, you know, the parkland, high school shooting, and all the horrible things that happen in the world? If, if it’s all God? How do you explain that stuff?
Kimberly Braun: I am, I am so with you. And it. It’s devastating, I suppose, the the presence of God and that is, when we as human beings, awaken into the the atrocious ways we act in the name of some high ideal, and that is God present there. But that a God allowed or willed? I can’t give any answer to that. I can only speak to the experience that I experienced God, when compassion becomes embodied. And I can understand the apparition because our biggest dilemma is our, our thinking we’re separate. And then the survival thrust that goes into preservation. That’s fueled by separation. You know, I need to preserve this. This is for the highest good, and they’re at heart. There’s something even though it’s very demented. When it’s acted out in the Holocaust. At heart, the essential movement to want to preserve the highest good is something that’s the noble part of being human. It is just is just completely deluded, because it’s forced by the biggest misunderstanding of all and that there is separation around all of this. So in a way that that huge devastation, and no and all of those things, is this shake up that we’re off track.
Rick Archer: So you may have just answered this question, but maybe you could rephrase your answer. Would you would, would you feel comfortable saying that if you could zoom out far enough and have enough wisdom? You could see the evolutionary potential in any circa a situation or event, no matter how horrific?
Kimberly Braun: Yes, I do. And I know that that’s a stance, and I know that I could find myself wrong, because life may teach me something different. But yes, at this point, my experience of reality is is so much the pulsing pneus of God. That I, I couldn’t say something that would contradict that. And I would be contradicting it if I had any other stance right now.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Well, it’s interesting, because some people lose their faith in God, when confronted by terrible things like that they will God couldn’t possibly exist, or this wouldn’t happen. But yeah, you know, I would say that, as difficult as it may be, it necessitates a deepening of one’s understanding of what God actually is, and a clarification, you know, perhaps a, a maturation out of a simplistic notion of, you know, some bearded, Wiseguy in the sky, to something much more imminent in a much more sort of, on the present in every particle of creation and orchestrating this, this play and like all plays, it has its, you know, its ups and it’s downs. And it’s it’s tragedies, and it’s triumphs.
Kimberly Braun: And if we, I think if we believe at Essence, that we’re eternal, it brings in a whole different world perspective to Yeah, and a whole different look at why we’re here and the reincarnation notions and that, you know, one of the one of the things I really liked about the shack, you know, the the movie that came out in the book.
Rick Archer: So maybe, maybe others haven’t Delta,
Kimberly Braun: Paul, I think it’s Paul, William young, I spoke at a conference. Interestingly, he was a big speaker at a big progressive Christian conference, and I mainly am brought in to speak in non Christian environments anymore.
Rick Archer: But they make you nervous. They make the Christians nervous. You make the Christians nervous, too, but I wasn’t gonna say,
Kimberly Braun: I know, but they chose me to speak here to which I was very honored. But I really appreciate his exploration of this notion of God. And and I saw him at a Trinity conference to right next to Cynthia Bourgeault and Richard Rohr. And there, he, he had the Trinity. So the Trinity’s at the the force of this book, their relationship with this man in the face of the loss of his daughter who was abducted and it just terrible, and the God part. So there was a Jesus figure, a spirit figure and a god figure, the god figure won’t enter into his line of reasoning of why did you let this happen? And I thought that was really compelling that Paul represented the the formless part of God, as you know, you’re not speaking my language. I’m here for you. I am 100% Here. But you’re just, you know, until you can speak my language, you’re not going to be able to hear the answer. Yeah. So I think that speaks to what you’re saying,
Rick Archer: you know, there was us trying to shoot, people might try to shoehorn God into a, we used to have a cat that used to love cats love to get in boxes, right. And we used to have this cat that would try to get into get herself into this little tiny box, and she couldn’t fit, you know, because every which way she tried to invent was a hilarious thing to watch. But I think a lot of people try to do that with God, they tried to kind of squeeze God into their concept, rather than expanding their concept to potentially appreciate even even one can never fully do. So what God actually is.
Kimberly Braun: Right, right. And you spoke to it with a quote earlier, too. I think when our path undoes us, and breaks us out of our languaging and our our leanings, then I think we are coming into wholeness.
Rick Archer: Yeah, question that came in that I think will fit at this point in the interview. Florence from New York asks, you mentioned living inspired by spirit. Do you propose to do that through a deep sense of what feels right? Or do you do this through direct transmission? I would say that comes through hearing or seeing or knowing through a divine moment. How do you achieve that?
Kimberly Braun: How do you achieve that? That’s a I think achieving that individual for for us. Living inspired by spirit, I would say is the opening up. Now this is again operating on my theology Florence and I accept that it has some definitions to it. but my experience is that at my very center, his spirit Jonatha cross eventually came to the deduction at the, towards the end of his life. He said, The soul center is God, not is like God or has God or His experience, but is God. And every time we make a choice to open to that experience, so it could be through the senses, because we’re sense creatures, it could be through the letting go in our minds, it could be, you know, my love is the practice of meditation and contemplative practice, I find silence is the place where we touch, taste, and begin to embody the spirit that’s at our center. And as we do that, then our minds become mature in the knowing of How to Be open to it moment by moment, and how to ask the questions that keep us open. So it’s kind of like this delicate dance, that in the beginning, were clunky around, because we’ll have an experience, and then we went to land, you know, to hold on to it, where we all want to do that, or, you know, will be untenable, get confused, and will back away from what spirit may be wanting to reveal to us. So we have this dance, but slowly over time, and in direct proportion to our willingness to surrender into this space of our being. So our intentionality is perhaps the the biggest lever that can lead us to that achievement, in that we are reshaped, to discover, taste, touch, and live an inspired life in spirit. And I love myself to involve all the senses. So coming into the silence, I also love experiencing that even in this conversation. I feel like I’m in it actually makes me want to well up a little bit. I feel like I’m in a matrix of silence, even though we’re having a conversation. Sure.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I bet you feel that even when you’re doing something intense, I feel like it when I’m playing pickleball, which is this intense, fast paced effect, Quick Reaction Time sport, that it’s part, it’s partially enjoyable because of the juxtaposition of the silence with the intense activity.
Kimberly Braun: I have to google pickup, I’ve never heard of sugar, it’s all the
Rick Archer: rage in Boulder. It looks simple at first, but when you start getting the higher levels of it, it’s very challenging. But anyway, anything like that the silence in the midst of activities kind of stirs up a lot of bliss, don’t you think?
Kimberly Braun: It does, and it’s informing. So there, there is a feeling quality. And I think attending the fact that it leaves us feeling good, is the candy that gives us the courage to surrender even more, so that the parts that are scared or resistant to living a life in spirit can realize it’s safe to do it. And it’s going to end well and I’m not going to be obliterated as a human being are not going to be forever alone. And Florence, you can always connect with me to at my website, and that I have lots of lots of ways I love building relationship and exploring that question more deeply. And being a help facilitator.
Rick Archer: Yeah, no, you know, meditation came natural to you, you’ve been doing it in a way in one way or another since you were a child. And you know, I’ve been doing it since the 60s. And and if I had been left to conceptualizing as a way of growing into all this, I think I don’t think I’d still be alive anymore. But I think it would have been very frustrating. So here’s a question came in from somebody named Kranthi. In Baltimore, who said, I am a beginner in meditation, my practice involves being aware of my thoughts, I have noticed that the effectiveness of a session depends on how active or tired I am time of day mood, etc. What is it that is being aware of the thoughts? And why is it affected by those external factors? I would say the condition of your nervous system has a lot to do with it, but and that has to do with fatigue and all but go ahead and answer that.
Kimberly Braun: Yeah, that’s that’s really lovely. I mean, that’s a probing question what what is it that is being aware what is the observer and I, I have a very experiential way of relating to that. I have a technique that I teach called Essence meditation, and it evolved from my years of ritual and then setting the anthropological and psychological structures of ritual and realizing the power that can offer support In being prepared for sitting. So that those are some things that can be helpful to prepare you to enter into your time of meditation, with a bit more readiness. Observer, it’s interesting because I think the observer is an aspect of ourselves, that is present, to be the counterpoint to the dance of presence, and in time, is the gateway by which we are simply present, and there is no more observer. So I wouldn’t say the observer doesn’t exist. I don’t I don’t think that’s very helpful. And I, that’s a big statement to say. But I do think that the observer is a quality or a faculty within ourselves, that we might term higher self. And as the Higher Self does its role of providing the container for us to grow in presence, eventually, those divisions, because it’s eyebrow that’s going on here, I’m observing my thoughts, I’m observing the sensations in my body, eventually, the experience of being dissolves, even that eyebrow away. And the observer disappears, and is no more. So not that the observer is not incredibly important as a quality of who and what we are.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I want to reiterate what you just said in slightly different words. But I think it’ll be the same point which is that an answer to chroniques? Question. If you’re observing your thoughts, fine. But then there’s the threefold structure there. There’s the observer, there’s the observed the thoughts. And then there’s a process of observation by your nervous system, your mind by which you’re able to experience thoughts, if you could meditate in such a way that you were to observe a thought, but observe it in its subtler and subtler and subtler and subtler impulses, you will reach a point at which the thought disappears, and that threefold structure disappears as well. And there’s no longer that all that’s left is pure consciousness without any observation. And that’s what they call Samadhi. So you might want to look into the possibility of that.
Kimberly Braun: Yeah, and I think the word allowing is really operative there. When we observe, yes, when we observe, so often, we can come in as an identity. So there, there’s this dance of observing, and allowing all of what you just shared, to expand within ourselves. And then there’s the observing that leaves us in a stance, oh, there’s my thought. And, and we can tell when we’re creating a rigidity, in relation in our meditation, and when we’re creating and allowing that, that allows that dissolution to happen. And that that’s a wonderful practice to take it to that level.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And, you know, Kranti was mentioning being tired, or, you know, the quality of meditation, varying according to what was going on during the day, and things like that, I mean, I find it helpful to lie down, take a little nap before I meditate in the afternoon, just because then my any superficial fatigue that would cloud, the processes has been eliminated. But you know, you have to kind of the body is like a vehicle, or an instrument through which this experience or any experience can happen. And so the instrument has to sort of be functioning properly for the experience to be clear.
Kimberly Braun: Yeah, and if you’re interested in some tools and techniques that can help with that, just email me, I have a huge toolbox that can that can offer what might work best for you. But in addition to that, I think that showing up for meditation has its own power to it, that even when we’re tired, I know it can feel or seem like the quality of the meditation, it’s not as good. It’s not, you know, we didn’t do as well or it’s not as good. But I don’t I don’t buy that. Because I think that ultimately when we choose to when we choose to meditate, it is because Spirit within us is wanting the experience. So we may think we’re choosing to take on a practice. But I think it’s a deeper unconscious consciousness that’s moving us into the practice. And that is where there is faith for me. That that that is actually that’s happening and it’s not on my shoulders. I participate, but it’s not. Ultimately, I’m becoming the power source. I am not the power source there.
Rick Archer: Yeah, that’s very well put, I appreciate that. It’s almost like you don’t do meditation or you don’t do enlightenment, you know, it’s not something you get to by pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. It’s, it’s, it’s more of a surrendering into a larger intelligence than it is any kind of individual. You know, motivation or intention.
Kimberly Braun: Would you say? I definitely, I definitely think that. Yes. And there’s a great, I’m totally paraphrasing this quote. So it’s probably very different of our reading from the book, but I, but I love in Augustine’s confessions. And he says to this effect, because he, you know, he was masochist. So he was very big into dualism into, you know, evil being in material caught in the material and, and light needing to come about through, he had a very sophisticated spirituality, if you will, before he came Christian. And he brought all that into his Christianity, all that dilemma. But he says this phrase at one point when he had been really broken open, and he said, late have I loved you beauty ever ancient ever knew late have I loved you, I ran through the streets shouting for you. I talked about you to everyone. I could not find you. And then you shattered my deafness. And I found that you were already always within. Wow, that’s beautiful.
Rick Archer: Yeah, that’s really cool. So let’s get back to your story a little bit. So okay. You, you know, you went through this thing, and you told us about earlier and you’re really kind of on fire. And then somebody put the the centuries of book in your hands. And then you read St. John and so on. And then you one thing led to the next and you ended up getting into this monastery and living there for how many years
Kimberly Braun: 10 and a half years and a half years.
Rick Archer: And it sounded interesting. Lots of good food, it sounded like to me I kind of, you know, figured you’d be dry bread and water. But
Kimberly Braun: you’re right. I mean, we did fast, we really did some big fast, but, you know, living off the land, north, North Dakota, we there was a celebration of the census. You know, we farmed the land. And I don’t know that I’ve, I love still to cook. But I don’t know that I’ve eaten so well as I did in North Dakota. Yeah, it
Rick Archer: was kind of mouth watering reading your book and describe what you’re getting it from a foodie too. So you’ve got my lens. And so, you know, there’s not, I mean, one could read your book to find out what it was like living in that monastery. And it was very regimented. And you got up at midnight to pray. And you got up early in the morning. And there was a lot of time spent in prayer and meditation and, and it was a, you know, you can say something about this more if you want. But I want to fast forward to how and why you left but you won’t say anything more about what it was like being there. Before we get to that.
Kimberly Braun: There was something incredibly Symphony like in living in silence. Part of me, the the mature and the immature part of me. Because I we’re always this kind of interplay of both those things going on, rejected this idea of being put in a box, you know, I couldn’t stand it in my late teens. I don’t put me in a box. But I also didn’t want to put other people in boxes. And part of my intuitive knowing in that was that once you put in a box, you set up a box that needs to be healed, and transcended or shattered or changed. And I really wanted to challenge myself to live a life that was not being put in boxes or putting people in boxes and the lifestyle they’re afforded that because of the amount of silence We lived in. You know, when you’re when you’re left alone to your own thoughts on things. And when you’re opened up to the intuitive psychic relationship to those around you. It opens up all your senses in a lot of different directions. And there was something really, really powerful there was something very miserable when parts of me that needed to be healed. Were operative. You know, there’s nothing like a greater hell than being stuck in silence by yourself. You can’t put a radio on or call a friend
Rick Archer: solitary confinement is considered one of the most, you know, serious punishments.
Kimberly Braun: I think it’s I think it’s unethical to ever impose that Somebody especially somebody
Rick Archer: who has no recourse to enter a famine. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Kimberly Braun: Like, like send them on a meditation retreat is my my solution. Yeah. But then you also open up these other avenues of the self capital S. And so it was a perfect fit for me and never ceased, in all its ups and down never cease to be like a honeymoon for me for the 10 and a half years. So it was it. It was a dramatic series of events that led to my leaving, because I never would have thought of leaving it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So
Rick Archer: what was that dramatic series of events?
Kimberly Braun: In short term, because my second and my third book that are written that will be coming out in a little bit, they give a really wonderful immersion.
Rick Archer: We give you a little teasers for the book.
Kimberly Braun: I’ll give us some teasers. I’ll give you that, right. Because, yes, it’s all the little things that lead us to the big things. Well, I was asked to join a community down in Texas, and the first book ends that way. And, and that community was very small was very different. You know, we were in a converted house, there were only for other nuns, all for those nuns who are 20 years older than me. It had, we had to truncate all our ritual, my love was the chant and ritual. And just because of what it takes to keep a monastery going, we had to truncate the way we did ritual. And so it was beautiful. And it was in one way Freer of the, the amount of discipline in the obedience part, it was much freer than that. So in that way, it was more contemplative. More, more breathing space, but in another way it it has less structure, less of the the gateways into the things that I loved. But about an A year into being there, and you can see this in my TEDx talk, because I share it there. I was out back and I was really hungering for solitude. Because with our house on the outskirts of town, we were getting the doorbell rang all the time. And it was beautiful, because
Rick Archer: fundamentalist Christians kind of convert you or they were our friends. Oh, I see.
Kimberly Braun: Like, it was it was a largely Hispanic culture. And, you know, so there were people wanting to bring us things, and it was in whatever. And there were also tons of people coming for prayer. I had some very dramatic prayer experiences with people. But it was more like we were part of the community, whereas North Dakota was really contemplative, where you rarely saw or talk to somebody. And I was, I loved all that community. But I longed for the solitude. I mean, that’s why I became Carmelite was to have the long hours. And I was out back and I had this moment of soul hunger, and it just came up like a fire in me. And in that longing for silence and solitude, I heard really clearly build the permanent monastery. And because it was an answer that I could feel energetically, right, I gave this huge yes to like, yes. But I had no idea that it meant I was actually going to physically build the monastery. I thought it meant figuratively, like we’re saying yes to building it, and it’s going to give us our lifestyle back. So what ended up happening
Rick Archer: to the monastery down there? Didn’t you remember hearing that story? Wow.
Kimberly Braun: Yeah. So what happened was, through a series of totally unplanned events, because I was the right hand person of the leader in that community, I was infused with the know how to do it all. And it was, it was when it was an example of when we say yes to the unknown, and we’re given all we need, yeah, my mind was attuned to architecture to general contracting to the principles of engineering, to reading blueprints to organizing, you know, hundreds of 1000s of dollars of product. And
Rick Archer: would you have any prior experience with any of this stuff? Right,
Kimberly Braun: I had no experience. And so I was I was the general contractor for this multimillion dollar project that was happening without formal funding, and with with our Blueprints, you know, and as that was happening, I was changing. gifts within me were being realized that I didn’t know there were ways that my presence was allowing people to experience spirit in themselves, just because I was still a monastic. And I was caught in this project and the flow of the project was so dynamic. Yeah. So in that process, there was a lot of great things like that that happened and then there was a lot of confusion. I mean, I was doubted I was only 29 years old. You know, like, Who’s, who’s this little girl like an Archie doing this, this must be illegal like. Yeah. And so there was a lot of light and dark that happened with that there were huge shakeups because it was not according to any of the paradigms of what how things are meant to happen. And in all that shakeup, I didn’t know how much I was being changed. And without realizing it, my spirituality was blasted into a mysticism that just didn’t fit that container anymore. I wouldn’t have thought that that that didn’t come to my mind at the time. Like it wasn’t a reflection I had. What led me to leave was I was in my hermitage one night, and I had this rush of spirit, it was an inner illumination. And Rick, it was incredible. In it, I was washed up my valves. And again, it had nothing to do with logic. And I’m walking around and he and I knew what it felt like to be Carmelite and I’m walking around the monastery, I’m like, Oh, my God, I’m not Carmelite anymore. I just, I was like, it was it was like, being displaced, and all of a sudden. And I loved my vows. So I wasn’t grieving the loss of the Vows, because I felt filled with the beloved. I grieved later, many different losses. But it wouldn’t have made sense to say it just there was no fit anymore. It was almost as though part of why I was there was to realize in my body and in my mind, what’s possible as a human being, and to bring that out in service, to to be of service that others can, within their very lifestyles, taste and know that they can live from that place. Because because I may be very esoteric, but I’m very practical to. So So I left in, you know, without the storyline, this happened, that happened, you know, and I could hinge that they were all involved because the story was the human story and the divine story. But it was a soul move.
Rick Archer: It was it was your calling, just as an inner calling had gotten you there in the first place.
Kimberly Braun: Yeah. And everything. Fortunately for me, when I have inspiration like that everything lines up. So I got a scholarship to do my seminary training. And I ended up landing in a international program. So it’s situated me with the broad worldview that I needed because I was in Washington DC for 911. So come from all my solitude and then be immersed and all that chaos. I was really provided for with being with all these people from all over the world.
Rick Archer: Did you get a lot of resistance from your fellow sisters in the monastery when you both there and in North Dakota when they heard you were thinking of leaving to the CEO? You’re going crazy. You’re going off the beam? You know, you come to your senses stick stay here and that kind of thing.
Kimberly Braun: The leaders Yeah, the main thing was on my way to hell
Rick Archer: because of filtering, you know, like
Kimberly Braun: I’ve met a lot of great people here. Yes, yes, I’m in the I’m in the large pool now.
Rick Archer: I saw a funny cartoon the other day that there was this guy was new to hell, and, and the devil was saying to him, so we’ve kind of given up on the fire Brimstone stone thing. We’ve covered the floor with Legos. Yeah,
Kimberly Braun: and then there was really great grieving. You know, my one, the prior was up in North Dakota, who I was especially close with. She was deeply grieving and, you know, Rick, I got it when, when I knew I was going to let everyone know, I would have been surprised if I had been met. If the conversation would have been one that we would have walked away from i She was grieving because I was such a fit. I am such a contemplative. Yeah, I mean, I was like a fish in water. And usually when somebody leaves us because they they’re not contemplatives in that way. And so her big grieving was that God was losing a warrior and, and something, you know, somebody else was winning. So there was there was a lot of but my some of my fellow sisters, you know, we didn’t get to talk much because of the rules and I would have loved that i i missed some of them greatly. And I really, really
Rick Archer: correspond with them now and tell them how you’re doing and everything right. And they’re not even likely to watch this interview, they probably don’t have computers and stars.
Kimberly Braun: I know, as far as I know, I wasn’t welcome. I wasn’t. I had been banned from different things. I wasn’t technically banned, but there was incredible pressure that I was a bad influence. Yeah, sure that I was
Rick Archer: welcome. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it kind of threatens what they’re doing. I mean, if you’re gonna leave, and you seem to be happy about it, and you’re happy, even after having done it, then others there may begin to think Well, geez, you know, maybe I’d be happy and what she seems to be doing okay. Yeah. So it kind of jeopardizes the whole structure.
Kimberly Braun: Well even think of my theology. I mean, if I was in contact, where Spirit is leading me casual, would open up all sorts of unacceptable title.
Rick Archer: I mean, you know, there’s that term spiritual, but not religious. I bet you would still say that you’re a spiritual and religious. But I bet you would not put words in your mouth. But I bet you would say, Well, yeah, but my religiosity is just a much bigger basket now and includes everything.
Kimberly Braun: Yeah, I think it’s true. Because I think there’s a place for the container. And for me, religion, in its best form, is a container for us to experience the ineffable. So I think that there’s a strong part of me, and I think, in many ways, there’s a strong part of me that will. I’m not not Catholic, I’m, I’m not Christian. Only according to the way it’s framed,
Rick Archer: right. But no, Jesus for that matter.
Kimberly Braun: Yeah. But but the Christian Ness, the, the, and the Catholic NES are so in micelles,
Rick Archer: sure, it was Yeah, channel, it was your, you know, the route, you took your upbringing. I mean,
Kimberly Braun: and I feel, yeah, and I feel very blessed trick because I so understand the woundedness. So many people are moving through and not that I haven’t had things I needed to grieve or heal. But for the most part, because my experience has been this love affair with God. I feel really, really grateful for all my experiences. You know, even at times when observance in religion has been oppressive, or unethical or rigid, it’s been an opportunity for me to touch into the, the essence of the person that was wielding that sword. To to have compassion. So I feel really, really blessed that that I think my early childhood experiences have left me with that. That kind of inner stability.
Rick Archer: Yeah, definitely marching to the beat of your own drummer. But not not not sort of meandering erratically around the around the marching field. I mean, you definitely have a purpose and a direction that, you know,
Kimberly Braun: oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for seeing that and saying that I appreciate it out here is this freelance mystic?
Rick Archer: Personally, I think a little religious and spiritual people should study a little bit of astronomy. And firstly, we’ll get over the notion that the universe is only 6000 years old, that one that one is pretty quick, but then, you know, if you can contemplate the according to most estimates, how many civilizations there probably are in our galaxy alone, and then how many galaxies there are, it gives you much deeper appreciation for the greatness of divine intelligence. And it also, you know, pops you out of any narrow way of thinking you may have in terms of, you know, my way is, is the right way. I mean, it’s just, you know, God is not a one trick pony, the universe is this vast, diverse play and display of infinite intelligence with, you know, as many paths to God as there are beings.
Kimberly Braun: I love that I am, I was in its concept, I was very moved by a book called The World Peace diet by will title. And it’s his doctoral dissertation and in it, so he’s vegan. And his passion has been really a harmonious relationship with all of the world plants, animals, everything. And one of his chapters is called intelligence of the species. And one of my takeaways from it was that we have a really rudimentary idea of what it means to be intelligent. And we form this this construct that sets us up to say this is this is the way we grow in intelligence. This is what intelligence is like this gives us our measure system, but in it is an egocentricity that keeps us hemmed into and blinds us from exactly what you’re saying. But there could be many, many ways that intelligence is actually happening. And I even love some of the movies that are coming out that are challenging that, you know, arrivals one of them and
Rick Archer: yeah. watched it a couple of times.
Kimberly Braun: For me to
Rick Archer: mumps. Oh, I
Kimberly Braun: know. And Amy Adams was amazing in that movie, too. Yeah. So I’m 100% on board with you on that. And I think that’s one of the adventures when I was little, and when I had that experience in my book about the autumn leaves. And I realized that that is what my life was about being and becoming in God,
Rick Archer: you want to tell us this thing? Because most of you here haven’t read your book.
Kimberly Braun: Sure, sure. So we live in Cincinnati, and we live so close to school. And it was a time when you know, everybody felt safe to walk to and from school. So I loved walking home in the auto school. And I loved everything about the fall because I love school, I was very, very nerdy that way. And I left autumn. And it was one of those days walking home where you can tell autumn has definitely happened. The air had changed, everything had kind of the the quickened up, the wind was quickening up, the leaves had begun to turn, there was a very mild, mild chill in the air that you know, everything was changing. You could smell it. And I loved it. And I would walk home and from time to time I would get caught up in feeling the dance of nature. And it felt like it was going on all around me and all of nature was invited me to the dance. So I would actually like a dervish I would world home. It’s right rural all the way home. And one of these times that I world home, I stopped at the end of the cul de sac where we lived. And I was breathing it in because I was in such a deep place of bliss, I was breathing it in. And as I opened my eyes, a tree across the street caught my attention it lit up. And then one leaf lit up off that tree. And the leaf had turned colors. And it was you know, kind of going back and forth like this, if you could tell it was going to leave its branch. And I was taken into that leaf. And as I was feeling one with that leaf, the leaf broke off, and it began to swirl towards the ground. And out of nowhere when that leaf dropped, and I’m putting words to this, everybody because you know what it’s like when you’ve wordless experiences. Sadness, really deep existential sadness arose within me. And this unspoken is that what life is about dying? came and sadness just filled me. But at the very, very moment because I was in such a vulnerable open state. At the very moment that that happened, time stopped. And it was like everything kind of pulled back these veils. And I had this direct experience that that leaf was in God and God was in that leaf. And the translation, since I was projecting on belief was the experience of me that I am in God and God is in me. And that’s all like this. That’s this. That’s it. And what what struck me about that experience was that the the, the movement of events filled me with so much joy that the sadness was washed away forever. Like all the traces of it were completely gone. And it was within that, that framework that everything has kind of evolved for me. So I always felt like well, that’s all life is about. And it feels like I have this like awesome chocolate cake. And I just want to share it with everybody. I know it that sounds very evangelical. But you know, it’s kind of like oh my god, this is the best cake ever. You’ve got to eat it. So that’s that’s
Rick Archer: the wafers they make eat. Right? Yeah.
Kimberly Braun: And what I love about it, as well, which I think is really important in understanding our growth as human beings is, we’re we’re complicated. And we can have these ineffable experiences and still mature into them, and still have the journey. And when when I was three, right as I was coming out of that dark night, everything had happened and everything changed. I was having the dramatic experiences. I was at a healing mess. And I got slain in the Spirit, which is where a healer puts their hands on you and you’re washed and you all over fall over and and I was brought back to that moment, what’s interesting about that moment is that when I was 19, and it had again, there was this experience of Christ present standing beside me. And there was the experience that that sadness that had welled up was the sadness of having lost my grandma, when I was three, who I was very close to, and almost losing my mom when I was four. And those impacted me deeply. And I was carrying it in a cellular way and in my psyche. And when I was five and had experience, I didn’t need process that could have this deep moving, illuminating experience, and then have it be the place and the way that I could hold the sadness that needed to be healed, when it was ready to come forward. And in that moment, when I was 19, I wept the the loss, the losses that had happened when I was little. So I think that’s, it’s it’s such a teaching to me about our complexity as human beings.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Because it’s an interesting breakthroughs. You know, it’s like, some people have fairly mundane journeys, you know, and some people have these dramatic ones with all kinds of flashy breakthroughs.
Kimberly Braun: And I don’t need to take drugs, I said, like, psychedelic already.
Rick Archer: Never a dull moment. But people shouldn’t be envious. I mean, I was long meditation courses, and people would get up and talk about all these flashy experiences and all and I would sort of say, Yeah, wow, experiencing something like that. And, and, but we’re all wired differently. And, you know, some people are flashy experience types, and some aren’t, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re more advanced, or, you know, closer to enlightenment, or, and I don’t think anyway,
Kimberly Braun: I don’t think so either. I mean, I knowing myself, and all the ways I’ve heard, I know, I feel pretty confident saying it’s not. So one of the things I love to do, Rick with when I’m working with people in groups, or one on one is to provide the opportunity for people to taste that brilliant illuminative part of themselves. Because oftentimes, because of the stressors that people are holding in their minds and their views of themselves, some of what’s really flashy and incredible, that’s going on, is missed. They’re just not letting themselves taste it. They’re not, they’re not letting their minds and hearts and bodies go there. And I love to actually celebrate other people it and then they walk away and they they they feel it so much, that they’re taken away from looking outside themselves to what somebody else may have to offer them.
Rick Archer: Interesting enough, whether it was you or somebody else, or something else I was reading or listening to about the thing of looking outside, looking outside looking outside and then kind of hitting up against the wall and being turned around 180 degrees and I mean, I’m sure you’ve had this but there’s some interesting story around this I just
Kimberly Braun: write I think it would make sense. Again, I don’t know physics. Well, I you know, I dabble in all these different complementary fields to what I do and and I probably am a little biased and pulling from it what supports supports my worldview a little bit.
Rick Archer: Physicists crazy. Yeah. All these new agey type co opting quantum mechanics
Kimberly Braun: but if you look back at some of them even more ancient texts in and you look at the energy construct of a human being there, there’s the postulation that as a human being we are the microcosm of the macrocosm and that there’s real relevance to that as within so without, and I think what is brilliant about hitting against the limitation of the without part? It’s so logical to look without, it’s so logical to say, Well, I’m muddied mess. Let me look to a teacher. Well, I’m not the source of all let me look to a practice right.
Rick Archer: So doing relinquish my own autonomy and my own good sense.
Kimberly Braun: Yeah, for sure. And that to hit the limitation and to have the devastation of that falling short of expectations that that’s meant to be our all, you know, turns us to ask another question. Yeah. And to open to the possibility of experiencing that. We might be within the very microcosm of the macrocosm, which would mean that ultimately, our own Evolution will only come about if we look within and it dismantles the egocentrism?
Rick Archer: Yeah. marshy, Mahesh Yogi said an interesting thing one time he said God may be omnipotent, but the one thing you cannot do is remove himself from your heart. And because obviously, if God is omnipresent, then he’s in your heart. So, perhaps within within oneself within one’s own heart, or however you want to phrase, it is the easiest place to find God first. And then maybe maybe later on, we’ll find them everywhere. But you know, why not start from where we are?
Kimberly Braun: I love that. I love that. And yeah, let that begin to inform how we find it in other places. Right? I, I love this notion of like playing with the guru idea. And I want to do something really fun one year and, and walk around holding mirrors. Everywhere I go to a mirror campaign. Yes,
Rick Archer: would you know, in the Christian and other traditional literature’s of the world, there’s a lot of mention of, you know, angels and gods and devas and ascended masters, and all sorts of being enlightened or more evolved beings that dwell, and subtler higher realms. And you’ve had some experiences of this sort of thing. I mean, to what extent do you think that that all is relevant to an instrumental in people’s spiritual development,
Kimberly Braun: I think it’s integral to be interfacing with the possibility of that, I think that everyone is going to have a different level in which it’s helpful to their own growth. Like, for me, I’m very relationship like, it’s my, as a not only as a woman, but just as the lover archetype is, I, you know, I’ve gotten to know my personality. And I love feeling connected and supported. And I flourish and support others when I feel that as well. So for me being really open to the fact that I’ve got friends in all these realms, and to experience them actually helping me and showing up and that is huge. For me surrendering even more to the unknown. I don’t know that everybody needs that. But I do think it’s really integral to be exploring the possibility. And I have always found to as I work with people from all different traditions, it’s very interesting how people will have experiences of the beings in their traditions, which says something to me about the plane of consciousness piece was somebody who might be really open to Goddess presences might not be open to angels, you know, and somebody who might be really open to Jesus might not be open at all to, you know, an experience of an Ascended Master of another lineage. Yeah. And I don’t know that there’s a right or wrong with that. But I think it’s incredibly important to be developing an openness in, in an in knowing ourselves and, and having a relationship there.
Rick Archer: It could also be the divine kind of orchestrates things such that we experience these presences in forms that will be comfortable to us are familiar to us, you know, someone who’s an ardent Christian would get a little freaked out if all of a sudden the Buddha showed up or, you know, some totally naked sign or something.
Kimberly Braun: Right. And you might even think that, well, then somehow we’re constructing it. And I think there could be some truth to that. I think that by our way of being open and not open, we form a subjective relationship with all of those realms.
Rick Archer: Yeah, it’s not necessarily that we’re constructing I mean, let’s say that we’re all looking at a statue. And we have and there are 10 of us. And we each have totally different colored glasses on. So each of us is seeing the very same statue with in different colors. So it could be impulses or energies, or whatever they are, are just filtered through our particular lens or glasses as if you will. And in a way that makes sense to us. I mean, they even say sometimes after people die, that they go to initially to a place that makes sense in terms of their belief system that they had had during life. And then maybe later on they say they’re shown that there’s a more universal picture.
Kimberly Braun: I believe that and thank you much better put.
Rick Archer: But it’s interesting and it’s also interesting that some people who are very spiritual completely by the existence of any such thing and think that it’s all a lot of, you know, fantasy fantasizing. I don’t happen to agree with them, but to each their own.
Kimberly Braun: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it’s and how objective can we be? How objective can we hold a stand with realms that are with realms that are definitely more than what we know.
Rick Archer: The reason I find it interesting, though, is that although, you know, it can be indulged in and there are people who get really into channeling and ascended masters and all that without really being very concerned about self realization, or you know, their own personal evolution or enlightenment. The reason I find it fascinating, though, is that I kind of have this my this sort of definition of spiritual development as being inclusive of all possibilities, really, not just knowing the essence. But knowing though the full package of how, how everything works, all realms all levels, the whole universe, top to bottom, you know, core two, two branches or whatever.
Kimberly Braun: Yeah, I love that, too. I’m very similar to you. I remember even when I was about seven, I realized that I would, I didn’t want adventures that would end. Yeah. I didn’t want this feeling of of coming to the conclusion of something. In the bigger sense, not in the small sense. Yeah. And again, I think that was part and parcel with, you know, part of it is the, the, the expanse of parts of who and what I am his personality, the Spirit lead, and part of it was the boy had losses, and I don’t like losses, so I don’t want things to end. So you know, it’s fueled by a lot of things. But that has that is compelling. To me. The thought that this adventure in these mystic realms, as I like to call them isn’t going to end. You’re not going to get to a place where you got I got it now. Yeah, I got it. Yeah. So
Rick Archer: just thinking the little kid in the back of the car thing, are we there yet? I mean, totally. There’s no there, right. I think it’s funny, but it’s I think it’s me, I’m sure there are people listening who disagree with me right now. But I think it’s more realistic, actually, to the way things are set up. I really, and some people I respect a heck of a lot tend to agree with me like audio Shanti and others that there is as far as we can see, no end point to, to this game, you know,
Kimberly Braun: right. And I, and I am so on with that, that I love to correlate it with the sensibility, if you think of children, like they’re playing on the playground, and they’re having a great time, if you can recall a time when I can do it in adult circumstances, too. But you know, our childhood memories sometimes are easier to look back on. And, and you’re just lost in all that playing. That’s what I feel is this mystic adventure. It’s that qualitative piece, you build a sandcastle and you push it over, and you start over, and then you render the swing. And you’re and, and there isn’t this getting tired of playing. And part of where we set up limitations from what I find as adults is that we’ve set the end goal, we want to feel that we’re going to arrive as a human being to a certain point of illumination. But if we tap back into the qualitative nature of our being, as an evolutionary being, then we can develop the inner stability to maintain that quality of life and all we’re doing, and then having an endpoint becomes irrelevant. Yeah. And not
Rick Archer: having one doesn’t mean that you’re never going to be fulfilled. Because if people don’t have the concept, well, I’m not going to be happy until I reach this endpoint. So it doesn’t mean that you’re never going to be happy because the goal is all along the path, so to speak. I mean, you know, fulfillment can be very copious and complete, and yet they’re still unfoldment. They’re still developing. Yeah, still refinement.
Kimberly Braun: There is and I’m massacring this reference, but you can look it up and get a better a better read. There’s an old book called, I think it’s 10 cosmic powers. It’s a tantric texts. And the third one in there. So all the powers are feminine. The third one is there is the Tripura Sundari.
Rick Archer: Oh, yeah, this is I just interviewed a woman a few weeks ago. Oh, VT. chinchilla, and about the 10 Maha videos. People can look that up. But we went through this but go ahead and set go on and say what you’re going to say.
Kimberly Braun: Well, I think what speaks to what you’re sharing is that that power is the realization, I’m going to use God terms that we, as God, are God’s desire and God’s fulfillment at the very same time. And to actually realize that power as we are, that is where that comes to, with the endpoint, we’re fulfilled, because we are that desire, but we’re continuing to magnify and evolve and expand and become
Rick Archer: speaking of God. We’ve been speaking about a lot. You know, somebody would say, My God, yeah, some traditions speak of God consciousness, a state in which one actually meets God or cognizes God, or comes to know God, in a much more tangible way than any sort of belief or, or concept? What do you have to say about that possibility?
Kimberly Braun: Well, I think I have a non answer to it in some ways. I’ve, I’ve had, we had having experiences as a Catholic, there was the experience of God. And I would say, that’s where I grew and transform in that it, you know, it was a direct experience
Rick Archer: of how did you know God, God, and what was it like?
Kimberly Braun: A field, freedom. And the freedom, the freedom is the operative word, because I would want to use the word love, but But Love feels, to relational fields to emotion, conditional and emotional and, and in that freedom was the, the fullness of thoughts, but not thought here. And, and that was in, in an experience of God. But within those experiences, my experience of God doesn’t happen that way at all anymore, because that, that that point of experience is gone, because the experience of it has done away with that distance.
Rick Archer: So and this is not so much an i thou relationship anymore as a sort of a unit unit of
Kimberly Braun: a unit if you unitive. Right. And not that there aren’t distinctions within me and my experiences, but it’s shifted dramatically. But I, I really assume especially for the Western psyche, I really esteem a healthy surrendering into and direct experience of God or God consciousness. Because somehow, however, we’re wired or set up as Westerners, we seem to do well when we surrender into that, but it would lead to the dissolution of that it wouldn’t lead to it becoming the thing.
Rick Archer: Yeah, there’s an age old debate in Hinduism between the the version of oats and the and the Vedanta and the version of it’s called them the Maya Barton’s, who, because of the nonsense, I mean, the version of its want to have this i thou relationship and ever be a devotee of God and enjoy the bliss of that of devotion, whereas the others, you know, are more into just achieving complete unification and, but Shankara resolved it in a way said, the intellect imagines duality for the sake of devotion. So, there’s sort of the appreciation of the unit T of life and at the same time within that, that some diversity which can stir up waves of devotion.
Kimberly Braun: Yes, I love that. I love the language you just used for that. That speaks very much too to where I’m at. I can give an example. A recent example to where, where it’s fun to still play in the i thou realms. I was attending a retreat with the Brahmakumaris in New York. And they did awesome different little meditative experiences that they led in Burma. Oh, Brahma Kumari sits an Indian order. The founder who’s 93 is still alive. And this was, I don’t know if it’s all women, but this happened to be all women and sister Jenna has a show called America meditating. And she had me on back during my book tour. So I knew of them and knew them and brilliant women, you talk about women who are solitary mystics, and yet in community, very brilliant. And this one we did a puja where we had two circles, one of the more traditional ones where you know, the inside and the outside you’re facing and you partner up for things. She led us with eyes downcast of bubbling consciousness within ourselves, and then bubbling it out our eyes And then as we bubbled it out our eyes, then we lifted the gaze as consciousness to the one before us. And it was incredibly moving. And I think that that gives a, a great example of the i thou still being relevant. Still being a playground where we can be explorers and adventurers without creating a dualism around consciousness and the unitive nature of reality.
Rick Archer: Well, so, let’s, let’s talk a bit a little bit about what you do and what people can do if they want to connect with you, you know, what you have to offer them and so on.
Kimberly Braun: I would love that. Thank you, Rick. So everyone listening. First of all, you can email me anytime I am a very relational person. So if you, Kimberly at Kimberly braun.com. And if you go to my website, which is my name, Kimberly braun.com, you can find a pathway to reach me as well. And I, I do private sessions, I have a number of retreats that you could join in on, I am launching a flagship course an eight week, deep dive, that I’m sending out videos for starting on Monday. So if you’d like to be added to that list, you can get for free videos, 25 minutes long, and the last ones, 45 minutes, that are a bit of a taste of if you wanted to attend something with me or work with me or bring your gifts. And you could just enjoy them, you know, they’re there. They’re free explorations. And
Rick Archer: if somebody is watching this two years from now, this this particular thing won’t be relevant. But you know, right. On your website, you’ll have other kinds
Kimberly Braun: of my website. Yes, because I’m Rick, I’m moving into the online world, much more these days. So I still offer retreats. But I’m doing live stream for a lot of my workshops, I’ll be leading a Tantra Christ’s workshop that will livestream in March, I’ll be teaching down in Sedona in the end of March, I’ll be teaching in San Diego, we’ll be offering an immersion in Teresa of Avila, his writings. And we’ll also be creating my girlfriend is a great singer and I chant as well, we’re going to create some unique chance based on her writing. So if if you want to get in touch with me, go to Kimberly braun.com, join my newsletter, you’ll get a download of the ebook, we’ll be in touch, I can send you information, you can contact me through the email address, you can give me a call at 941-284-3036. And I will always have more offering. I’ve been doing what I’ve been doing now out of the monastery for 17 years. And I think I’m just just beginning to chip away at the beginning of my role and my play here on Earth.
Rick Archer: Great. Well, it’s inspiring. And it’s kind of a inspires optimism that there are people like you doing what you’re doing. And many such people all around the world kind of makes it makes one feel that you know, we’re going to make it oh planet.
Kimberly Braun: I just have loved the conversation with you, Rick, I thank you for your reflections. And thank you for just following the organic move of the conversation. I love that I feel that that was very inspired. And I definitely have a lot of takeaway myself.
Rick Archer: Good. So let me just make a couple of quick wrap up points. You know, I’ve been speaking with Kimberly Braun. And I’ll be putting up a page on bat gap calm as I always do about this interview with links to our website and, you know, links to her book and stuff. And perhaps that page will be updated over the years if she writes new books and everything. And, you know, if you if if most of you watching this are probably familiar with that gap, but if you aren’t just go there and check out the menus. And you’ll see what there is to see. It’s pretty obvious there’s, this exists as an audio podcast, in addition to the videos. There’s a Facebook group where people discuss the various interviews. And anyway, there’s there’s links to all these things on the site. There’s also a geographic index, where you can find out events that are happening in your area by offered by the people I’ve interviewed and we’ll be telling Kimberly about that so she can register hers. Great. So So Thanks, Kimberly.
Kimberly Braun: Thank you so much.
Rick Archer: I’m so honored to be in touch. It’s been a lot of fun.
Kimberly Braun: It has been a lot of fun and thank you all for listening. I send you much love and I haven’t met you but I love you.
Rick Archer: And they’ve you will meet many of them soon. Yes,
Kimberly Braun: good.
